Wednesday, October 13th

Bill and I were supposed to meet Tom Brown and Walt Winter at 8:30am at the steak house so we could follow them to the Nantahala. I was pretty tired from Tuesday's escapades and had planned to sleep in until 7:30. However, I woke up at about 6:00am and could not convince myself to go back to sleep. So I got up, showered, read a bit, and went fishing for a few minutes over at one of the KOA ponds to warm up my cast. Bill got up a bit later and by the time we rounded him up some coffee and got over to Bryson City, it was 8:50am.

Meanwhile Tom and Walt had arrived early, so they ended up waiting for us for about half an hour. I blamed it on Bill, of course, but if I hadn't gone fishing over at the pond we probably would have been on time. Regardless, the extra time probably gave Tom and Walt a few more minutes to detoxify from the previous nights imbibitions. Which reminds me. It was truly amazing how much alcohol and tobacco the group had gathered into a single location. If everyone's rod cases had been mistaken as gun cases, the ATF would have certainly set the place on fire.

Anyway, we headed to the Nantahala which is a nice stream with enough open space for a beginner to keep relatively free of branches and bushes (although I did lose several flies). The river certainly didn't seem big enough to be home for as many large fish as had been reported by those who had gone fishing there on Tuesday, but it was a good five or six feet deep in some places. 

We split up--I went with Walt and Bill went with Tom--and I decided to fish my new 7.5' 4wt George Gehrke bamboo rod and Hardy Bougle reel. The combination turned out to be a great choice.

I had placed a large fly order with a Canadian supplier in anticipation of this trip, but the flies did not arrive in time, due to the Columbus day holiday on Monday. I found out later that the flies arrived the day we left. Fortunately, Walt was kind enough to bring an ample supply of flies for us to use--we owe you one, Walt!--and I was strung up and ready to fish in no time.

I walked down to the water and immediately caught two brook trout on a Parachute Adams while Walt got his rig ready. The first fish was probably 11 inches long and the second was a bit smaller than that.

Walt headed upstream and I walked down a few feet to a bridge that covered several nice pools full of fish. I could see the fish as the fly drifted past them, but they could see me as well, and so although they were definitely tempted by the fly, I couldn't get a solid strike.

By the time I had given up on the bridge pools and made my way back up to Walt, he had caught six or seven fish. He switched over to a streamer and started fishing back downstream and I continued upstream using a tan Elk Hair Caddis dry. As the distance between us grew, I could see that Walt was catching fish every few minutes. From what I could tell, he was using a fairly small Hardy rig--a fiberglass 6.5' 3wt rod and a extremely lightweight click-and-pawl reel. Some of the fish he caught while I was watching him were absolutely huge. Easily in excess of 20 inches.

Tempted to switch to a streamer, but knowing that I lacked the experience to have success with one, I stuck with dry fly patterns--Sulphur, BWO, Yellow Humpy, etc.--and caught a couple more fish over the next hour in the twelve inch range. Not bad for a newbie, but compared to how well things had started for me and to the abundance of fish Waldo was landing, things were a little slow.

I eventually reached a spot in the river where the water was moving too fast for my comfort level. Not that I was worried about getting sucked under or anything. Rather, I couldn't seem to pick the spots where the fish were or follow the fly in the water. And when I could follow the fly, the strength of the current quickly pulled the line and leader under making the fly completely unattractive to the fish. 

I decided to hike down and see how Bill and Tom were doing. As I walked down the road, I met up with Dave LaCourse who was taking a break from catching fish to eat lunch. I was hungry but wanted to keep fishing, so after chatting with him for a bit, I walked down to where Bill and Tom where. They were at the downstream end of a large pool trying to coax a rising fish to take Bill's fly. Walt was at the upstream end of the pool fishing a Wooly Bugger.

Bill has even less fly fishing experience than I do, so Tom was showing him what to look for and how to place the fly. As I've already mentioned, it meant a lot to me that these guys would take the time out to help us along like they did.

Anyway, Bill and Tom hadn't had any luck. In fact, neither one of them had caught any fish. Walt jokingly suggested that I go to the other side of the river from them and catch a fish in front of them to show them how it's done. In retrospect, I'm almost certain Tom and Bill were fishing a stretch of water that had already seen action that morning, but Bill finally spotted a nice Brookie rising to flies underneath an overhanging tree. There was a lengthy piece of tippet hanging from the tree as a tangible symbol of someone who had unsuccessfully tried to catch that fish a few days before. As luck would have it, I was in position to sidearm-cast the line up under the branches and after a few awkward casts I was able to lay the line up in there nicely, avoiding the branches and remnant tippet. The fish took my fly almost immediately and I landed the fish.

It was a nice catch, but certainly not one of the biggest I caught that day. However, it remains as the most satisfying fish I've ever taken with a fly rod. It was in a difficult location (for someone of my skill level anyway), it put up a decent fight against my bamboo rod, and I caught it in front of my friends. Bill got credit for the assist, of course, and we headed back to the cars.

By this time it was about 2:30 in the afternoon, and Tom and Walt had a few errands to run before supper. Bill and I had snacks with us and nothing better to do but fish, so we followed Tom and Walt down the road a mile or two to a nice area of the river, at which point we bid them adieu.

We parked the car alongside the road at a turnout where you could see a beautiful waterfall tumbling down the mountain and into the stream. It was absolutely gorgeous. I would have taken several pictures of it, but I discovered that the camera had decided not to work. Although I had just put new batteries (I tested them!) in it, it was convinced that the batteries were low, so it refused to take pictures in an attempt to conserve power. Whatever.

Even more amazing than the waterfall, though, was what we saw when we looked down into the water from the road. There, fifteen feet below us, was a pool of water right next to the shore that held at least four trout (two rainbows and two brookies) over twenty inches long! We could not believe it. These fish would race into the pool, swim around in there a while, and then race back out into the river.

I grabbed Bill's 8' 5wt rod, slammed one of my reels onto it, tied on a black Woolly Bugger and crept down to the water about twenty feet upstream. Bill stood up above near the car and acted as a spotter while I dapped the fly in the water from behind a rock. Unfortunately, the fish must have been spooked by my approach because they were nowhere to be seen. Finally, Bill gave up and walked downstream to fish.

Within a few moments, the school of monster fish returned, and a huge rainbow trout slammed my Woolly Bugger as I watched on from behind a rock. I set the hook and all bedlam broke loose. The fish went screaming and thrashing into the middle of the fast water and headed downstream with the current. I jumped up and started running over and around boulders trying to follow the fish doing my best Brad Pitt ("A River Runs Through It") impersonation, reel screaming and rod bent in full arc. The trout and I finally reached a large slow-moving stretch of water and I was able to bring the trout to hand.

Meanwhile, Bill had grabbed my camera and was trying to take a picture. But--get this--the camera would not take a photo! I stood there for a few moments loosely holding a big angry trout while Bill cursed the camera. No luck. Finally, I had to let the fish go so as not to kill it, so I turned and set it gently in the water. Just as I let go of the fish, I heard the click of the camera. Here's the photo:

After resting a bit to ponder what had just happened (and lament the fact that I had no photo to share with the rest of ROFF), I decided to drown my sorrows by catching more fish, so I walked up the river and fished a nice pool about 50 yards upstream. I caught about half-a-dozen more fish, mostly on a Yellow Humpy, and then headed back to the car.

As I was walking back, I could see Bill fishing, still trying to catch his first fish of the day. All of a sudden, he let out a whoop and I saw his rod bend with delight as he caught and landed his first trout ever on a fly rod. It was a beautiful fish, I'd guess about 14" long from  my view of it. Watching the scene gave me a chuckle, especially since Bill got several face-fulls of water from a finicky trout that wasn't willing to hold still long enough for Bill to set him free.

Bill caught another fish almost immediately thereafter, and then it was time to go. We were about to leave when I saw another bunch of monster trout enter the pool where I'd caught the first one. I couldn't overcome the temptation to try to catch another one, but try as I might, I could not incite another strike. We had to leave, but I've kept a visual picture of the place so I can find it again when I return sometime hence.

By the time we got cleaned up and and back over to ROFF headquarters, it was nearly 9:30pm. Fortunately, the guys were kind enough to wait for us before doing the raffle, which was lots of fun--with quite a few substantial prizes.

Since we would be heading back home at midday on Thursday, we wouldn't have the chance to see our fellow ROFFians again (at least until the Y2K Clave in Maine), so we bid everyone fond farewell and headed back to our campground.

Click here to read about Thursday...